Memories of the flesh
by LadyNightRunner
Summary: Vincent will outlive the others. He will be there at the end. In honor of those he fought with, those he loved, those who MATTERED, he commits their memory to his in the only way he knows how. Warning: death


This...ah, this. It came to me, parts of it at least, in some very weird dreams a few months ago, and I hadn't had the guts to elaborate and complete it until recently.

Everyone mourns differently. I have an uncle who hiked Wheeler Peak in his funeral attire after my great grandmother died. I've been shielded from the deaths of three family members now, and I expect I will be sheilded from others, so my mourning process takes that into account. I know people who weep and wail, and people who internalize, and many others. So, naturally, I wonder how characters I work with might mourn. And how they might remember.

I read about something like this practice once, though I don't remember how it worked, exactly. Suffice it to say that this was the natural progression of things.

**Rated for GORE, ideologically sensitive subjects, DEATH, violence, and yucky stuff. You've been warned. **

****Please tell me what you think of this.

* * *

><p>Yuffie died young. Vincent wasn't particularly surprised, really; she was such a small woman, and her first pregnancy was a hard one. The whole of Wutai mourned the loss of their young empress, but, as she had requested, her cremation was left to her former teammates, with whom she had truly grown up.<p>

Her body is several days cold when it arrives in Midgar, expertly preserved by some Materia spell Wutai had kept hidden during the war. Cloud and Tifa lay it out in their living room for viewing, as had always been done in Nibelheim, and let friends and family come in to pay their respects. Vincent arrives first and hangs around, waiting for the viewing to be over. That night, when everyone has gone to bed, he creeps back downstairs. The living room is lit by a single fat white candle, left there to guide Yuffie's soul out of her body and on to the next life.

He undresses her slowly, admiring her pale curves with the sort of eye other people might reserve for pieces of fine art. She had lived four days after giving birth, just long enough to name her son, and it showed: her breasts were heavy and round, her belly bearing the traces of pregnancy weight and faint silvery stretch marks.

"Too soon," he whispers. He strokes her face sadly, then lets his hand slide down to her side, below her ribs. The sharp tips of his gauntlet's fingers cut easily into her skin, through the fat and the muscle to the heavy moisture of the abdominal cavity. It is cold in there, colder than the air of the living room, so cold that the chill transfers to his gauntlet and makes the bones of his arm ache with it. He ignores it and reaches up, cutting blindly through the diaphragm and working his way around the dead, spongy lungs. He knows where the heart is, cuts it free and pulls it out, past the lungs and through the diaphragm and out of the heavy crush of organs in the belly.

It is small in his hand, small and dark and quite wet with thick, sludgy blood. Holding it carefully, he closes the lips of the wound in Yuffie's side, redresses her with one hand and makes sure she looks as serene and untouched as she did when he arrived. He is careful not to drip blood on her clothes.

Out in the backyard, he washes the heart clean, then goes and sits in the hammock with it, letting the heat of his flesh hand chase away the spelled chill of it. When it is as warm as he is- though he isn't as warm as the average human being, he is warm enough- he lifts it to his mouth and begins to eat. The flesh feels and tastes fresh, with that lively resistance that butchered meat usually lacks, but Vincent can taste the tang of Materia power in the back of his throat. No matter. He eats slowly and deliberately, savoring each mouthful, lingering on memories of the times spent with Yuffie. He lay with her once, her tiny, innocent body so eager and willing under his scars and sharp angles, but she was just curious and he only went along with it because he hadn't been with a woman since his twenty-fifth birthday, so nothing came of it. Still, he wonders if she would have lived, had she seen something to love in him. He couldn't have given her a baby to stress her body beyond recovery.

Vincent swallows the last bite whole, feeling the dull ache of it moving down to his stomach. He licks his fingers clean, says a prayer, and goes back to bed.

/-

Nobody is surprised when Cid dies. For all his busy, blustery self, he was still getting on in years, with decades of brutally hard work and hundreds of packs of cigarettes under his belt. It was quick at least, a sudden, massive heart attack that came out of nowhere and left just as quickly.

Vincent had been nearby, in the hangar where Cid let him clean his guns on one of the workbenches. He felt the sudden hole in the life around him, sighed, and returned to the house to see how Cid had decided to leave the world.

Cid was the only person who knew what Vincent's views on death were. In his will, he noted that he wanted Vincent to handle the disposal of his remains in whatever manner he felt necessary.

Vincent knows that the others will want to have some kind of service, some way they can send Cid off. With this in mind, he arranges an afternoon in the local funeral parlor. Cid is laid out on a cot at the head of the room, and Vincent sets up a dozen heavy carafes of Cid's favorites teas in the corner, which he feels is an appropriate sendoff. Later the body will be burned and one of Cid's friends will scatter the ashes from a small plane.

Nobody notices that part of Cid's thigh looks odd under his jeans.

After the last mourner has left, Vincent lets the funeral director know that they are finished, then quietly returns to Cid's empty house. It is dark inside, the heavy shadows smelling of cigarette smoke and strong black tea.

On the kitchen counter, Cid's old crock-pot has the light on. When Vincent lifts the lid, barbecue-scented steam rises up to tickle his nose and make his mouth water. Cid was a tough old bastard, and it had taken some thinking before Vincent had determined a way to make this piece of him edible. Slow cooking with a slightly acidic sauce was certainly the way to go.

The meat is so tender it falls apart when lifted with a fork. Vincent shreds it in the crock-pot rather than try to get it out whole, adds a little more sauce, and stuffs a roll from the bakery down the street with the thick, spicy-smelling mixture. Carrying this and a chipped mug of black tea, unsweetened, he goes outside and sits in the porch swing.

The sandwich is good, warm, almost hot, the rich, smoky flavor of the homemade barbeque sauce a compliment to the slightly gamey taste of the meat.

He lights a cigarette, takes a single drag, and sets it down on one of Cid's many ashtrays to burn out on its own while he eats, smelling Cid in every corner of the dark night.

Vincent and Cid had a strange relationship. They flirted, sometimes like two men playing gay chicken, sometimes like high school kids with no experience in love, sometimes like old lovers. They kissed sometimes, too, and touched each other. More than once they had watched porn together, jerking off in separate chairs, though Cid had drawn the line at Vincent fingering himself on one such occasion. They shared a bed when the weather was cold. But they were never lovers, never more than friends, though the scent and sounds of the man are forever burned into Vincent's memories, as sharp and painful as that of a true partner.

The last bite of the sandwich is cold when Vincent puts it into his mouth. He swallows it whole and washes it down with lukewarm tea, and thinks on death for a time. Then he goes inside, turns out the light, and falls asleep in Cid's bed.

/-

They are prospecting for fossils in an old cave when a gentle earthquake, little more than a tremor, buries the entrance under tons of rock and earth. Barret is caught in the backwash of the cave-in, one leg crushed to a pulp, body battered and bruised and nearly split like overripe fruit. Vincent drags him away from the site and makes him comfortable near a subterranean lake. They have plenty of provisions and supplies, but that is not the issue; Barret will not survive more than a few days without immediate medical attention, and even then, he isn't likely to make it.

Barret knows this. So does Vincent.

They talk of death, lying there side by side the first night after Vincent doused the lantern. Barret talks of cremation, and of how he doesn't know how his soul will make it out of the cave. When he trails off, Vincent quietly speaks of living on in friends and loved ones, of being carried forever within the living. He makes an offer.

Barret does not respond.

On the second night, Barret asks what part of him is so important to Vincent.

On the third night, Barret tells Vincent his desires and wishes, and he passes away as Vincent feels the sun rising above the mountains.

On the fourth night, Vincent is ready. He starts a small fire in their camp stove and places over it a pan made of beaten metal taken from Barrett's gun arm. He heats oil on the gleaming metal, then fries chunks of meat in it, sprinkling them with a spice mix from their packs.

The meat is tough but edible, and packed with flavor. Vincent picks up each chunk with the sharp tips of his gauntleted fingers and chews slowly, savoring the juice remaining in them.

He has Marlene to thank for his relationship with Barret. Honestly, it's the only thing they have in common, their protective love of the little girl with the big brown eyes and sweet smile- never mind that she is a beautiful, graceful young woman now, she remains that innocent little child in Vincent's heart. They were so very different from each other, but Vincent's strength was an advantage Barret was not shy about asking to borrow, and they often worked together, mining or searching or hunting things that Barret couldn't go after on his own. They were really close only once, when Marlene was hospitalized with pneumonia when she was thirteen and no one but Vincent believed she would pull through.

He swallows the last piece whole and paces the cave for a while, feeling the tough meat moving painfully down. When it finally vanishes into his stomach, he groans softly in relief and goes to his pack. In a small pouch inside it, he has a stash of Materia. Nothing that could break them out or heal Barret, just offensive and boost types. He selects a fully mastered Fire Materia, equips it, and focuses. In moments, Barret is a pile of smoldering cinders.

A week later, when the cave is broken into, Vincent silently presents Marlene with her father's remains.

/-

Time passes. People die. Vincent watches his dwindling circle of friends grow ever smaller.

/-

Tifa dies in a car accident.

Vincent slowly roasts her hands and glazes them with a slightly sweet sauce, eating them in the bar on his favorite stool.

He thinks on the adventures he had with her and the others. Many times, she was the only thing keeping them all together. She mothered anyone who might need it.

She mothered him relatively infrequently, but on the rare occasions that his body encountered an invader it could not immediately eradicate, she tucked him into bed and kissed his cheek and brought him tea or soup or medicine or another blanket or whatever it was he needed to feel a little better. Ironically, Vincent is nursing a cold the night he commits her memory to his flesh. He sniffles and coughs softly throughout his meal, and goes to bed with the dishes unwashed, hearing her phantom voice scolding in his ear.

/-

Tseng dies of an aggressive cancer.

He knew of Vincent's beliefs. His will explicitly states that the disposal of his remains will be overseen by Vincent, and so his body, still fresh, is turned over to Vincent without question.

There is another man who knew of Vincent's habits. Reno arrives at Vincent's tiny, rarely used apartment after the wake, quietly asking to partake in the meal.

Together they sit at Vincent's table and sear delicately thin slices of meat on a hot griddle, dipping it into tiny pots of sauce and eating each piece quickly before it can cool and toughen. The meat tastes fresh and healthy, testament to the lack of chemicals or medications in it.

Vincent instructs Reno to swallow the last piece whole and together they retire to the couch, sitting side-by-side and drinking sake.

Tseng was one of Vincent's lovers. They were not exclusive, and perhaps the closest Tseng came to having a single lover forever was in his relationship with Reno. The two men speak softly of a shared night, the one time they lay with Tseng together, pressing his powerful body between their stronger ones and moving as one body, slow and sweet and torturous until meeting a simultaneous end.

They go to bed together that night, alone with each other for the first time in many years.

/-

Cloud is a suicide.

No one is surprised. He was unstable for as long as anyone knew him, prone to depression, mood swings, and dark thoughts. He dragged about for several years after Tifa's death, letting his delivery service die a slow, painful death. The bar was willed to Marlene, taken care of by managers selected by Vincent himself while Marlene is finishing her degree, so it was saved from the same slow death.

Cloud's death was nothing like slow. He beheaded himself, using some strange twisting of one of his limit breaks to throw his sword and bring it back like an enormous boomerang, neatly separating his head from his shoulders and leaving a strange scene for the police officers who were called by the first innocent passerby to find his body.

Vincent has to sneak into the morgue to fetch his piece of Cloud. He takes the powerful muscle of his abdomen, retreating to his apartment to make a stew- appropriate, he thinks for a man who was always stewing in his own little miasma of attitude and bad mood.

It is not one of Vincent's better dishes. The Mako that saturates the meat is acrid and harsh on his tongue. It overpowers the gravy and the vegetables, and even the beer Vincent drinks as a nod to Cloud's heritage cannot mask the taste.

Vincent paces the streets of Midgar, the last bite of his meal caught in his throat, feeling weak and miserable. He thinks about Cloud, and how many times he had to save the little blonde man from one thing or another.

Cloud was another almost lover, but for the sake of being two men who had been modified and experimented on until much of them belonged to other people and things rather than because of a mutual camaraderie. It never happened, largely because Vincent cannot stand men who whine, and Cloud, in the heat of a moment, was a whiner and a whimperer and many other things Vincent couldn't stand in a sexual partner. They had been friends, though, the kind that sat together in a bar, silent and brooding, and drank, feeling better for the company and the lack of required conversation.

Eventually, Vincent goes home and goes to bed. He doesn't sleep well, his body responding badly to his meal, and he is sick when he wakes in the morning. Cloud's memory lingers in a case of food poisoning that lasts three unpleasant days.

/

Reeve is another heart attack.

It was not quick, like Cid's. Instead, it did terrible damage and Reeve lingered, reduced to a barely cognizant lump of flesh in a bed, for a week before he died.

Reeve was the only other person Vincent knew who not only believed in but also practiced ritual cannibalism.

In honor of his fellow believer, Vincent has a word with Rufus and leaves the hospital with a plastic container in a cooler full of ice.

He prepares a bath of cold salt water on the kitchen counter and gently transfers the brain in the cooler from the plastic container to the big mixing bowl. Four hours and three water changes later, he transfers it from the bowl to a pot of boiling water, flavored with herbs. Twenty minutes, to ensure proper cooking, and out of the pot, onto a plate, and into the fridge to chill.

Vincent sips a glass of white wine, dry as bone, while he waits. He pours himself another before taking the plate out and setting it on the table. The presentation is nearly perfect, and he smiles fondly at it before sitting down at the table and tucking in.

Reeve and Vincent were almost as close and Vincent and Cid. In some ways, they were closer, having gone to bed with one another for reasons beyond just a need for sex and having shared more intimate moments, whether those moments were on account of illness or stress or a terrible need to just be with someone to prevent a complete breakdown. Vincent remembers a night spent sitting up in bed with Reeve's considerable weight in his lap, the big man buried in a cocoon of blankets, shaking and sweating buckets, trying to fight off a raging fever. He whimpered and cried and clung to Vincent when he was awake, and he whimpered and cried and twitched faintly when he slept. Vincent stayed with him until the fever broke and he slumped, exhausted, into a healing sleep.

The last bite, swallowed whole, goes down smooth and easy as Reeve's singing voice, a sweet baritone that chased Vincent's nightmares away more times than he cares to count. Vincent finishes his wine, tidies up the kitchen, and slips into his bedroom to lie naked on the bed and drift off to sleep with the memories of dark eyes and gentle hands to keep him company.

/-

And so they go.

Rufus dies of pneumonia; he suffered many illnesses as he grew older, a result of his compromised immune system from the fight with Geostigma when he was young. Vincent remembers him over a delicious stir-fry.

Reno is poisoned, late in his career, by a younger Turk who wanted his position. It was not quick, and there were hours of pain and mess before he finally breathed easy, whispered soft endearments to the man holding him, and closed his eyes for good. Vincent kills the boy for his insolence and honors Reno with a barbecue and a truly epic hangover the next morning.

Marlene dies in a car accident. Vincent must remember her in secret, as her children are afraid of him and don't want him anywhere near their mother before, during, or after the funeral. For the first time in many, many years, he sits on a roof in the dark with a heart in his hand and eats quietly.

Denzel, like Reno, is murdered, but there is no need to hunt down the one responsible; as he bled out, Denzel shot the man in the back of the head. Vincent is pleased that years of lessons on a shooting range were put to good use. He makes a cheese steak, Denzel's favorite meal, and wanders about the city while he eats.

/-

It has been many years since Vincent had a friend. He drifted away from NeoShinRa and their causes, finding nothing in it to love anymore. His lovers died long ago, and their children are either dead or want nothing to do with him. He is alone.

He has been alone for a long time.

It is a cool day in October when Vincent sneaks into the old church in Midgar. It is a monument now, representing change and commitment to nature, and he really shouldn't be there.

He lies down in a depression in the worn floorboards, sighs, and just lets go. His organs shut down in moments, his body going loose and cool faster than a human's would.

After perhaps an hour, his body twitches, sighs, and opens up like a flower. Chaos carefully picks himself out of the shell of his host, careful not to jostle or step on him, and stands back, long fingers caressing the side of his breastplate that glows steadily from the Materia beneath it, imbedded in his flesh as it was once imbedded in Vincent's.

"Happy birthday, Valentine," he whispers. "You always did have a flair for the dramatic."

He crouches down, examining the husk of what was once a man, and then a monster, and then a hero. There is still much of him left, and he is still strong and his body is healthy.

Chaos' stomach growls. He has not had a meal in over a century.

"You would approve of this, I think," he whispers, and kneels beside Vincent's body. He takes hold of one of the spread flaps of flesh and tears, and begins to eat.

It is late when Chaos burns the remains of the body and stands, reeling slightly from the weight of the meat he has consumed and the amount of Mako and chemicals in it. He is better equipped to process them than his former host, but it still makes him dizzy and tired. He retreats further into the church to rest.

/-

Lying drowsy and warm in a nest of banners and linens for the holidays when the church is used for ceremonies, Chaos remembers.

He remembers Yuffie, young and sweet, moving beneath him like a pale, otherworldly creature in the moonlight somewhere, smiling and touching him like he meant something to her.

He remembers Cid, gruff and coarse, laughing and forcing a cup of hot tea on him, helping him take off cold, wet clothes after being out in the rain, welcoming him inside for warmth and companionship.

He remembers Barret, big and somehow distant for all his boisterousness, gently transferring Marlene to his arms at the hospital so he could fill out the necessary forms, entrusting him with something so precious he would give his life to protect it.

He remembers Tifa, strong and caring, braiding his hair out of his face and helping him to bed when he was sick with stomach flu, supporting him over a trashcan when he couldn't get out of bed, helping him sip broth and tea and juice until he was well enough to care for himself.

He remembers Tseng, silent and strangely serious, mapping out his scars with a brush and a well of dark chocolate sauce, learning every curve and angle of his battered body, making him shiver and sigh with the intimacy of it.

He remembers Cloud, small and unstable, clinging tightly to him in a darkened bar and crying desperately, needing an outlet for the immense emotional baggage he carried with him, finding safety and comfort in the only other person who had experienced pain like he had.

He remembers Reeve, warm and gentle, laying him back on a bed and kissing him, making love to him rather than fucking him, forging a bond that would last a lifetime, and whispering endearments as he did it.

He remembers Rufus, reserved and powerful, coming to him at home one evening, holding out his beloved shotgun and quietly asking for lessons in marksmanship, wanting to better his skills, not wishing to ask his Turks to do more for him than they already did, desperate to be able to protect himself when he needed to.

He remembers Reno, wild and surprisingly thoughtful, rolling him over on the floor one day and straddling his naked hips, massaging his back and shoulders with a pine-scented oil, refusing to stop until all the muscle knots he had forgotten were gone and he had been reduced to a barely conscious puddle of euphoria on the carpet.

He remembers Marlene, innocent and happy, braiding his hair with flowers again and again, when she was six, nine, twelve, twenty seven…always smiling and giggling and telling him how pretty he was and never knowing how much it really meant to him.

He remembers Denzel, quiet and distant, sitting beside him in the bar for the first time and taking a shot, spluttering and asking why anyone would ever want to drink whiskey, and slowly learning the art and seduction of a glass of liquor sipped slowly over memories.

He remembers Vincent, lonely and lost, having a crowd of strange people blunder into his life and turn it on its head, leading him hither and yon in pursuit of a madman, teaching him to live again.

Chaos yawns and rolls over, and the phantoms fade into his dreams.


End file.
